Dear Disney: Now you own the original 'Star Wars', please restore its full glory

The history of Star Wars and the history of 20th Century Fox, the movie studio that Rupert Murdoch just sold to Disney as one part of a massive $52 billion deal, are intimately intertwined.

20th Century Fox executive Alan Ladd Jr., known to one and all as Laddie, is the main reason the original Star Wars exists. In the mid 1970s, when gritty pessimistic movies reigned at the box office, Laddie was the only Hollywood executive who understood George Lucas' vision of a blockbuster space fantasy for kids of all ages. He fought the Fox board tooth and nail to make sure it was made.

The deal Laddie signed allowed Lucas full control over any sequels. So when Star Wars became the biggest movie of all time — saving Fox from skidding into bankruptcy in the process — Lucas was able to use Empire Strikes Back distribution rights as leverage. He gained control of all Star Wars merchandise that way, which is how he funded his own filmmaking empire.

Ungrateful to the end, the Fox board fired Laddie for agreeing to the Empire deal. But he had at least ensured one major chunk of 20th Century Fox's legacy: the studio still had the rights to distribute the original Star Wars, now renamed Episode IV: A New Hope, forever.

That's one possible reason why you haven't seen Disney make any restoration efforts on the original movie. Owning Lucasfilm may give it the rights to change anything it wants, but this is not historically a company that plays well with others. (Witness Disney taking its Star Wars content off Netflix in advance of launching its own streaming service.)

A proper restoration and re-release of Star Wars as it was seen in 1977, without the controversial retrofitting Lucas added in the 1997 Special Edition also released by Fox (the CGI Jabba the Hutt; Greedo shooting at Han) has been at the top of many fans' wishlists for years. There are dozens of free Star Wars "despecialized editions" from amateur digital restoration artists currently available in the secretive corners of the internet. All represent money lost to the coffers of the Mouse House.

Whether Lucas secured some sort of bargain as part of the Disney sale that his original movie would never be tweaked again or restored, we don't know. It's also possible that Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy simply has too much respect for her old friend and mentor to alter his most prized creation. (Currently, so far as Lucasfilm is concerned, the 2011 Blu-Ray edition of A New Hope is the definitive and only version that can be screened.)

But if Disney now feels able to monetize a widespread desire for true 1977 Star Wars without having to look over its shoulder at 20th Century Fox, it may yet do so. After all, that sounds like just the sort of thing to attract early adopters (read: geeks) to its streaming platform.

This Fox deal is getting better all the time.

Fanfare for the common fan

There's one more important aspect of Star Wars history that Disney now owns: the 20th Century Fox fanfare. Those drumrolls! That bright, confident brass! Millions of fans have a Pavlovian response to this sound: it says sit down, shut up, and get ready for some Star Wars.

And for good reason: we almost certainly wouldn't even know about this fanfare without Lucas, who single-handedly rescued it from the scrap heap of movie history.

The brief tune was composed in the 1930s and extended in the 1950s. The militaristic sound became less popular as America protested the Vietnam War in the 1960s. By 1977, it had fallen into total disuse — but Lucas the film nerd insisted it be used for Star Wars. After the movie's success, 20th Century Fox restored the fanfare to all releases.

But it was impossible to disassociate the sound from the space fantasy franchise. Not only did composer John Williams make sure his Star Wars theme was in a complementary key, he even re-recorded the Fox fanfare for Star Wars soundtrack albums.

Wisely, Disney chose not to replace the fanfare with its traditional signature equivalent, When You Wish Upon a Star, for the three Star Wars movies it has distributed thus far. The Force Awakens, Rogue One and now The Last Jedi all begin with silence over the Lucasfilm logo.

That silence is the sound of something lost, though. Without that rambunctious cheer of a fanfare, that call to order in the theater, Star Wars will never feel quite the same.

But the perfect nostalgia-soaked opportunity to restore it is coming up. The spin-off origin tale Solo: A Star Wars Story hits theaters on May 25th, 2018 — Star Wars' 41st birthday.

Mashable
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